


Wielders of Shadows and Flame

by CaraLee



Series: Fantasy AU [8]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, Teen Titans (Animated Series), Teen Titans (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, F/M, Gen, I rated this one higher for a reason, Seriously. This One Gets Dark., Slavery, Slavery and all the consent issues it brings with it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-04
Updated: 2015-07-04
Packaged: 2018-04-07 15:14:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,552
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4268085
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CaraLee/pseuds/CaraLee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dika and Kori. Nightwing and Starfire.<br/>Their story together, from beginning to end.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wielders of Shadows and Flame

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings for issues.  
> The fun part of this is that I'm finally giving you a look at the world outside Gotham. And an overview of several years of events that will eventually be filled out more. But they aren't the focus of this story. This one is about Dika and Kori.  
> The not so fun part...Read the tags.

Koriand’r was like no one Dika had ever met before, and that was saying something because he’d spent the first eight years of his life traveling the Light-lands as part of Master Haly’s troupe. She was somewhere about his age, though it was hard to tell because she was obviously not of mortal ancestry.

“One of those Star-Sprites.” Her master, a brutish man from the western reaches of the Metros Empire, bragged in a loud voice. Dika snuck a glance up at Brutus and hid a smirk at the blank look of polite enrapturement carefully concealing strong disgust. He cautiously turned his attention to the girl, with hair like fire and eyes like…he didn’t even know what, only that they were unnatural, inhuman, and absolutely beautiful.

Like him, she was crouched at the feet of her master. They had both performed earlier, Dika on the ropes and she in a dance, and now had only to attend to their masters’ bidding. Unlike him, she had only the cold stone of the floor beneath her, separated from her golden-fire skin only by the flimsy fabric of the dancer’s garb she wore. No cushions for her. But she was still there. They were both the sort of slaves you showed off. Exotic.

She was beautiful, she was sad, and she was angry. The cold iron-work of the rune-carven collar she wore the only thing preventing her from taking her freedom.

***

_“We weren’t able to talk then. Not out loud anyway. People like us have ways of trading information that free men don’t know.”_

_***_

She was free-born, captured with her sister in a raid against the hidden homes of her people, Tameraneans, they called themselves. (Dika knew the importance of self-names) She had been a princess and a warrior before she ever was a slave and she had not forgotten. At first, she had been scornful of him, thinking him to be one who would crawl before a master and turn over his fellows for a crust. (For how else could he be in such health and favor?) But her master had been stopped on Gotham for near two months. Enough time for him to change her mind.

***

_“The first time we really talked didn’t go well, but she warmed up to me eventually.” A wink. “I can be very persuasive.”_

_A burble._

_“Yes, we were just friends then. I was but fifteen summers and she was no older. She taught me her language in return for lessons in the common tongue, which she didn’t speak very well.”_

***

The night was deceptively calm as they perched on the roof of the stable, trading words and what stories the pain would allow them to share.

“And how would you _say…Oh…lalitra?”_

“Flying?”

“Yes, flying.” Kori leaned back on her hands, her eyes glowing in the blackness as she blinked up at the pall that hung between Gotham and the stars. “I miss…flying most. I think it not as bad if they let me fly.” She snorted. “But flying is too much like _svatantr’ya,_ like…freedom. They do not like us to fly.”

Dika bounced to his feet and held a hand out, grinning. “I can teach you to fly my way. Come!”

She raised an eyebrow but accepted his hand, allowing him to pull her to her feet. “What you do is not flying.”

“Isn’t it?”

***

_“And I taught her something else too.”_

***

Two nights before her master was to leave, Dika pulled Kori out into the woods outside the keep and took her to the hidden grove where he watered Nychterida and Desteredre out of sight of prying eyes. In a hushed voice and sheltered movements he showed her a secret, a cunning magic that it had taken him time to find the memory of, buried as it was, the memory of his grandmother teaching his mother and aunt the way of things as he lay near them, half-asleep, and too young to be banished outside with the men. A magic that iron could not block but would be blocked by.

Carefully, slowly, he taught her the symbols she would need.

Two weeks later he heard of the reward offered for a rogue Sprite who freed herself and fled, leaving her master injured and angry.

Brutus pretended not to see when he smiled.

***

_“I never thought I’d see her again you know. I’d think about her sometimes. All the time. I just hoped that she was flying free and happy.”_

***

He knew he shouldn’t have done it, traced the symbol upon his cuff to block the _gorgio_ magic from tracking his movements and gone out. He may not be Robin anymore, Master Varius has seen to that, but he will not stop protecting people because of that. He uses the wind-travel and takes himself either to the dark port of Blüdhaven or to a certain part of the Metros Empire he had never been before, whether as Robin, Rikárd est Varius, or Rikárd ray Helios. So far west that it was almost in King Olivier’s lands instead.

Unlike Robin, Nightwing wore black, the accent of blue the only thing separating him from his shadows. Unlike Robin, Nightwing wore a slave bracelet concealed beneath the gauntlet wrappings on his forearm. Unlike Robin, Nightwing was alone.

Until he wasn’t. Viktor was the first, swiftly followed by Gharfeld and the _Chovihani_ who bade them call her Raven. Every morning, as he slipped back into the keep, holding his breath lest Alfredos, Master Varius, or, later, young Master Iason catch him, he could not truly contain the happiness inside at having found new friends. Friends who did not know his past nor what he is. (Not that Wally or Roi or Garth or even Demostrate ever cared, but once they had known things were…different for a time, though not for long and they had been closer than ever for more than a year’s time before Master Varius forbade him from seeing them.)

He had thought he had a new team. To train, to lead, even if he never dared be friends with them the way he had been with the others.

And then he found her. Or maybe she found him.

Either way, they stood, one in front of the other, simply staring. She was clad in rags, but he did not think she had ever looked so beautiful.

***

_“That was the first time she kissed me.”_

***

For two years, he and she had built a relationship beyond either of their hopes. As if they were free. As if they had choices. Because Dika might be a slave and Koriand’r a runaway, but Nightwing and Starfire could fly.

For two years the new team fought side by side, even after Master Varius found out. Because he did find out, during the…incident with The Mercenary. (Though Dika thinks he had known for much longer) Even now, the memory of those days sends a shudder through Dika’s body and he has to fight to keep his fingers from crawling over his shoulder, searching for something that was no longer there.

For some two years, life was good. Not perfect, but good.

Then, one day, while Dika was on Gotham, Raven was away in the mountains for some peace and quiet, Wally and Roi were at their homes, and József was on the other side of town trading music with a troubadour, _they_ came for Kori.

By the time Dika was there, Viktor and Gharfeld had regained consciousness and the others had returned. But there was nothing they could do, the bounty hunters and their prey were long gone and no matter where they searched they could not find them.

***

_“We couldn’t find her. I couldn’t save her. I’m sorry.”_

***

Only a few months later, she’d found him. Sort of. Her master had returned to Gotham and she was with him.

When he saw her, he had never felt so angry before, not even when he had learned that the search for Antonius Zoticus had been called off. There were better things to use resources for than chasing a man who had killed a few slaves. Beside the rage that filled him at the sight of Kori, that anger was as a candle to a bonfire.

She was…not dead inside but…tired. The light behind her eyes was all but gone, and bruises stood out dark against her fire-bright skin.

Like their first meeting, they knelt on the floor, silent as the free men and women talked around them. Her eyes never leaving the stone and his never leaving her. At least, not until her master spoke to Master Varius with purpose.

“I’ve been thinking about breeding her. Trying to find a decent match is hard though.” Then there were rough fingers in his hair, tugging his head up. “This one’s not bad. What’d’ya say? Usual fees, split the sale price?”

He felt Master Varius' hand on his shoulder, fingers digging in hard enough to bruise, and heard the empty laugh that his master affects as part of the mask he wears with others. He didn’t really hear the words Master Varius used to brush the offer off and change the subject. His mind was racing, swift as the wind-blessed feet of his best friend. He twitched in a deliberate way, finally succeeding in getting Kori to look at him. Slowly, deliberately, he asked a question of her.

***

_“I didn’t see any other choice. I couldn’t just abandon her.”_

***

He could have counted on one hand the number of times he had lingered in his master’s presence since The Fight. Even fewer were the times he had sought an audience. Iason knew something was up and gave him a concerned look as he left the room. Alfredos stood off to the side, his worry shown on his face. Dika ignored them both, steeling himself for what was to come, and forced himself to look up. To meet Master Varius’ eyes for the first time in years. (The incident with The Mercenary doesn’t count.)

He didn’t say anything. He knew Master Varius had seen and understood what it was that they had said without words.

Master Varius…Brutus looked back at him. Calm. None of his internal turmoil showing in his eyes but Dika could see it in the clench of his fists and the set of his shoulders. “Are you sure.”

Dika nodded. “I’m sure. _We_ are sure.”

***

_“I wish I could say that I remembered. You deserve better then what we were able to give you.”_

***

Less than two days later, the agreement drawn up and signed by both Master Varius and Kori’s master, Dika stood in a small room, waiting.

The situation was a little unusual. What is commonly done is the master of the sire is paid a fee and receives a smaller share of the assessed value of the offspring. Master Varius had worked a deal though. Kori would be under the care of an acquaintance, (Lady Dinah, widow of Sir Padraig of the Lance, formerly of the House of Drakon, who was technically the dowager chatelaine of The Western Coast, since her daughter of the same name was queen) for the duration of the pregnancy, and after she had given birth, the child would belong to the House of Varius, where Koriand’r would also remain until either a wet-nurse or could be found or the child was ready to be weaned.

Dika still does not know how much gold Master Varius traded for this to be the agreement, but he knew that he and Kori will never be able to repay him. They had dreamed, sometimes, of children who were free. Their child would not be free, but he or she would be safe, which was more than they could have hoped for.

One of Kori’s master’s retainers entered and shoved a cup into Dika’s hands. “Drink.”

Something in his stomach twisted as he drained the potion and for a moment he thought he might vomit it back up all over the retainer. And not because of the foul taste.

_This is wrong._

It should not be this way. They should not have to do this. They aren’t animals, to be marked and traded and bred for the entertainment and profit of others.

As he was pushed into the only slightly less small, windowless room where Kori waited, already succumbing to the effects of the same potion, a drug to ensure conception, he felt himself falling under the fog and had time for one more clear thought.

_This isn’t right._

***

_“I may not remember that night, but I remember when you were born. There was a storm.”_

***

There had been a storm. Of course. Because that was their lives apparently. Dika had paced, back and forth, just outside the room where Kori was giving birth to their child. (A girl, Raven had told them some months earlier, a strong, healthy girl, with a spirit of fire and wings on her heart.)

Maybe it was hours that seemed like seconds or a mere moment that stretched for an age. Either way, he knew not how much time passed before the midwife left the room and told him to enter.

Kori had been exhausted and sad, and their daughter had been beautiful.

***

_“Yes, you always have been beautiful. Even Brutus thought so and you know he doesn’t care much for the fae folk. But you captured all our hearts from the first time we saw you.”_

***

He had taken her to present her to Master Varius. To show the lord his new property. He didn’t think he would ever forget the expression of wonder on their master’s face. Nor the surge of tears that came to his own eyes when he said that Dika and Kori would be allowed to name her. Kori, proud, fierce Koriand’r, had already done so.

Their little Mar’i.

***

_“Your mother does love you. It’s why she left you.”_

***

It was Roi who had brought the news, that Kori had once more fled, leaving her master’s body a smoking ruin in his own house. Dika held his daughter close and was glad.

“She said that the little one would be safer here, with you, then on the run with her.” The one-time crowned prince of the Western Coast shrugged as he tossed back a goblet of Southern wine, inspecting the tint left on the side of the vessel. “How can you do it?”

“Do what?” Dika had asked, soothing Mar’i, who had been particularly fussy that day.

“That.” Roi gestured at the infant. “You didn’t want it. They made you make ‘er. How can you bear to even see her. Doesn’t she remind you?”

Dika shook his head. “No. She doesn’t. And even if she did, it wasn’t her fault. Why should she be the one to suffer for it.”

His friend looked at him, and for a moment, Dika saw the remnants of Ruadh the Harper's son beneath the healing wreck of Prince Roi. “You are the best of all of us, little brother.”

Dika watched him go, returning to his own daughter.

***

_“She’s out there somewhere, Starshine. Maybe she found her people and was able to go home. But we’ve got each other. We’ve got each other.”_


End file.
